Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday February 12, 2009 @10:08PM
from the cue-the-brouhaha dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Novell has unveiled some of the fruits of its technical collaboration with Microsoft in the form of Moonlight1.0, a Firefox plug-in which will allow Linux users to access Microsoft Silverlight content. Officially created by the Mono project, it is available for all Linux distributions, including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat and Ubuntu. Also included in Moonlight is the Windows Media pack, with support for Windows Media Video, Windows Media Audio and MP3 files."

I got a bid in a gig for Silverlight, and, the thing is, Flash is actually a bit better for some of the special effects. I think its fair to say that Flash and Silverlight are designed to do two different things. Flash has more fancy graphics options, but, Silverlight is easier to assemble content dynamically with. You could go one of two routes with Silverlight. One way is to send out the binary blob ala Flash, but you can also just send out xml straight out to it.... that makes it a bit more like working with a normal web server paradigm. In that sense, you can view Silverlight as more of a stopgap to HTML5 than you would Flash.

I used to think it was mass-hysteria when I heard people say what you just said. Until a while back I stumbled upon this on Novell's site:

This protection extends far beyond our broad Novell Indemnification Program; you also benefit from the Novell and Microsoft patent cooperation agreement. It ensures that when you buy any Novell productsâ"whether Linux-based or proprietaryâ"you receive a patent covenant from Microsoft.

And:

Under the Novell and Microsoft patent cooperation agreement, when you buy any Novell productsâ"whether Linux-based or proprietaryâ"you receive a patent covenant not to sue from Microsoft. Microsoft's covenant not to sue a Novell customer applies to a Novell offering independent of the channel of distribution and licensing terms, and whether any code is covered by GPLv2 or GPLv3.

The interesting thing is that Moonlight downloads the codecs for you on demand (no need to add other repos) and they are properly licensed (as opposed to w32/w64codecs). I can see a lot of Linux users doing this, actually.

Since Ubuntu and Suse already ship Mono (or have drunk the MS kool-aid, depending on how you feel), they should include this plug-in by default so that it works out of the box.

Lasercopter: Cannot work with 1.0 compiled for 2.0autocosmos tv: Does not even detect the pluginMeshviewer: Does not detect the pluginLorenzo Reca: Does not detect the pluginManic Miner: Does not detect the plugin

Unfortunately many restaurants have sites designed by web monkeys that require flash to function, this is bad because most mobile platforms don't have flash. I know I've skipped places that might have been good because I couldn't check out their menu from my Blackberry and chose another restaurant where I could.

Do what exactly? Linking off to a site that requires Silverlight with no explanation doesn't seem like a very good argument when you're posting to a forum that doesn't want to install your plugin. (Or more to the point, many of them can't install Silverlight 2.0.)

Your second link talks about multi-bitrate encoding. Which strikes me as (like the entire Silverlight platform) a solution looking for a problem. Despite the fact that Microsoft has had the technology deployed for years as part of WiMP, the market hasn't bought into it. It's just as easy (and probably less confusing) to simply provide different sizes. 95%+ of current streaming videos don't even have to worry about that. The closest thing we have to an issue is Youtube using low quality as the default. And even that has more to do with backwards compatibility and paced rollouts than it does a strict technology problem.

Perhaps Silverlight will be better positioned when HD streaming becomes the norm. More likely however, is that HD will be the norm when the majority of hardware on the market is both capable of HD streaming and integrated into the standard home in a way that would make HD streaming a superior enough experience for consumers to want to use it. At which point the advantage of technologies like multi-bitrate streaming simply vaporize. Microsoft would do better to spend those resources on implementing the web standards they've been blatantly ignoring for the past decade.

As an aside, why is it that every Silverlight website stops you cold? There's not even a description of what it is you're missing and/or why you should install the plugin. It's simply "install this or go away". So I go away. No skin off my nose.

Do what exactly? Linking off to a site that requires Silverlight with no explanation doesn't seem like a very good argument when you're posting to a forum that doesn't want to install your plugin. (Or more to the point, many of them can't install Silverlight 2.0.)

The second link is about how the stuff in the first is authored, and doesn't require Silverlight. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Your second link talks about multi-bitrate encoding. Which strikes me as (like the entire Silverlight platform) a solution looking for a problem. Despite the fact that Microsoft has had the technology deployed for years as part of WiMP, the market hasn't bought into it. It's just as easy (and probably less confusing) to simply provide different sizes. 95%+ of current streaming videos don't even have to worry about that.

The challenge with offering multiple sizes is that in forces the user to know what their system and connection can play, and it really only works with progressive download models, not real instant-on, easy random access long-form "streaming." That's fine for some audiences, but not for the mass market. Multibitrate done right means nearly instant startup and gapless playback, dynamically adjusted to what the user's machine can play back. It's a very different use model than YouTube.

Perhaps Silverlight will be better positioned when HD streaming becomes the norm. More likely however, is that HD will be the norm when the majority of hardware on the market is both capable of HD streaming and integrated into the standard home in a way that would make HD streaming a superior enough experience for consumers to want to use it.

Ah, that's the point! Smooth Streamings gets us out of having to wait for everyoen to be able to do HD to use it for mass audience content. If only the top 40% of users can get full 720p, the top 40 % of users get full 720p. And users who have less get the best experience their hardware and network is capable off. We don't have to sweat the lowest common denominator.

As an aside, why is it that every Silverlight website stops you cold? There's not even a description of what it is you're missing and/or why you should install the plugin. It's simply "install this or go away". So I go away. No skin off my nose.

There's a lot of flexibility in how a site can present the install option. For example, NBCOlympics.com offered a fallback to an IE embedded WMP ActiveX component. I agree that more sites could do a nicer job of it, and we're talking to them about improving that experience.

It's used in a number of other web properties. For example, the 2008 Summer Olympics website had hundreds of hours of coverage and highlights viewable via Silverlight. It was also used for online streaming of the Obama Innagural Events [microsoft.com]. It's also used for showing highlights, news conferences, game recaps, etc. on NBA.com.

Yes, if horrors like that were allowed onto the web, we'd all be doomed.

Oh, wait...

The difference is that with the image formats you mentioned are all manipulatable via HTML, aren't interactive in any way.

They are all explicitly content-only with no interaction.

PDF though, that isn't really for the web. Thats aimed at pixel for pixel, screen for screen uniformity - which HTML battles against. HTML and open web standards is all about the browser showing the content in whatever way the user needs to see the info, and have it all work.

What the previous anonymous coward was getting at was when you put the structure, interactivity, and applications all running encapsulated inside a plugin (where the browser/user can't config it), then you either subvert HTML (redundant) or provide non-accessible content (bad thing). The goal should be to move structure/architecture out of plugins and into the markup where it belongs. That way, in 10 years time when you can't see anymore, your browser will be able to jazz the content together so you can access it with your futuristic hypersensor.

This is probably due to the Silverlight initialization Javascript which only works on Windows for IE, Firefox, and on OS-X for Safari. Unless the Silverlight initialization Javascript is updated on the webserver which hosts the Silverlight application, which I doubt Microsoft will do, there is almost no way that this will work in Moonlight.

I mean, FFS, Adobe had Flash ready for the iPhone in months.... But we can't even get a native x64 version of it on ANY OS.

Funny you should say that, because I'm running the x64 linux flash plug-in right now. Its supposedly in alpha, but seems entirely functional to me. Check out the release notes [adobe.com]. Yeah, they came up with something for the iPhone in a few months, but it is simply running a derivative of OS X, and the plug-in had a huge demand.